‘A sad victory’ for agriculture as court of appeal sides with farming concern tired of dealing with oil companies’ abandoned wells
WASCO, Calif. (KGET) — In the long-running battle between oil and agriculture, chalk up a victory this week for agriculture. So, why aren’t farmers celebrating?
Because, says Kern County farmer Keith Gardiner of V-Lions Farming, it should never have come to this.
“This is a big victory for farmers in Kern County,” Gardiner said, “but it’s a sad victory (because) we didn’t need to go down this path.”
Gardiner has been behind the efforts to get oil companies to clean up after themselves. The all-too-frequent complaint among farmers is that once an oil extraction operation idles or abandons a well, the surface equipment is often left to rust, taking up usable ag land.
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This week, however, the California Court of Appeal ruled in Gardiner’s favor in his challenge to a county ordinance intended to streamline oil and gas development. The court ruled that the county violated the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, by refusing to consider preserving farmland through agricultural conservation easements as one way to reduce oil’s impact.
“We’ve had oil wells on our property for 60 years or more — idled and abandoned wells on our property,” he said. “We pay the taxes … we can’t use the land. We pay the water fees, the school fees, and that acre or so, or two acres, where the old well is, is not only being a hazard, we get no use out of it. So we were trying to come up with a common sense solution.”
The court directed the county to set aside its controversial ordinance for now and refrain from issuing drilling permits until it complies with CEQA.
Efforts to reach officials with the Kern County Planning Department, where the ordinance originated, were unsuccessful.
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Kern County is thought to have 28,000 idled wells. The cost of capping and cleaning up an abandoned well can vary widely, but the state Legislative Analyst’s Office puts it at $111,000 per well. That beats paying the state’s annual idle well fee of $150 for each well idled for between three and eight years.
Now the county must consider ways to compensate farms for ag land lost to these abandoned wells, possibly by providing offset easements – an acre for an acre.
“Once you kinda get backed into a corner,” Gardiner said, “you come out swinging.”
The challenged oil ordinance, which was forecast to speed the approval of tens of thousands of new oil and gas wells by 2040, was first approved in 2015 – and Gardiner was there for that, too.
The court’s decision will impact oil and ag interests throughout California.
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